White Howlers
One of the three Lost Tribes of Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the White Howlers are the only ones the Garou really don't like to talk about. This is mainly because they aren't exactly lost enough. They used to be the tribe of the Totem Lion.
What happened to them?[edit]
You see, way back in the days of the Roman Empire, there was a bit of a conflict between the Howlers and the Romans. The Empire had been (albeit unknowingly) taking clans of Howler Kinfolk from Caledonia (now Scotland) as slaves, and bringing a load of Formori north into their territory after they arrived in Britain. The Howlers were not fucking amused, and the entire tribe promptly marched southwards to kick the Romans' arses in revenge. The results were not very pleasant for the Romans, to say the least, as the White Howlers stormed their headquarters and exacted revenge on the invaders.
Unfortunately, this short-sighted act of revenge had terrible consequences. With their ancestral lands left completely undefended, the Wyrm's forces flooded on in and gleefully made themselves at home; caerns were defiled, entire lineages of Kinfolk tainted by the Wyrm, and the land itself stained with evil. Realising they'd royally fucked up, the Howlers promptly began a desperate battle against the encroaching Banes and Fomori, in which entire Kinfolk clans had to be slaughtered by the Howlers to prevent the birth of new Fomori. The casualties from this (emotional and numerical) caused them to unite into ever-larger packs dedicated to purging the Wyrm from their lands, which would soon come back to bite them in the arse.
During one particular road trip in which many Wyrm-creatures were destroyed, the Howlers made a terrible discovery - the Great Pit, a portal directly into Malfeas, the home territory of the Wyrm.
Now, you'd expect anyone sane to keep the hell out of there, or at least make certain that they had enough forces to come out victorious before attacking. Three guesses as to what the Howlers did.
After a tribal council in which they tried to gain support from the other European tribes (receiving no answer, presumably because the other Tribes recognised the sheer lunacy of this action), the majority of the tribe agreed to go charging into the mouth of hell with the aim of weakening the Wyrm enough to reclaim Caledonia entirely.
Unsurprisingly, this was a horrible, horrible idea. The Howlers ended up entering a region of the Umbra known as the Black Spiral Labyrinth, where they were tormented endlessly by Wyrm spirits in a series of endless battles, gradually breaking down mentally and physically until the Wyrm could corrupt them wholesale. They soon became - no points for guessing this one! - the Black Spiral Dancers, better known as one of the reasons the W:TA world is so smegging grimdark and one of the main antagonists of the game.
Driven completely barking mad by the things they had experienced, they changed their names, erupted right back out of the hellmouth, and proceeded to rampage across Caledonia, capturing Kinfolk and Garou and killing anyone who would not submit to them. Those poor bastards who were captured alive were forced to walk the Black Spiral in turn, driving them insane and creating even more BSDs, though a few scattered survivors may have escaped capture. By about 200 AD, the Howlers were functionally extinct.
TL;DR: Pict!Werewolves with elements of the Get of Fenris and 40k's Judged.
(Note: this is the 20th Anniversary Edition's view of it. The original, pre-retcon, had the Howlers regularly challenge the Black Spiral Labyrinth as a test of strength, only for this to gradually corrupt some members of the tribe while many Kinfolk became Bane-influenced. This culminated in a civil war between the corrupted and uncorrupted Howlers over their homeland's freedom, in which the corrupted members drew on the Wyrm's power, beat their former kin, then dragged them screaming into the Black Spiral Labyrinth to be converted into Black Spiral Dancers).
Organization[edit]
Prior to their face-heel turn, the Howlers were organized after the clans of their Kinfolk - a result from an early split during the Ice Age in which the Homid members went south and the Lupus stayed north. They were pretty scattered in terms of where they lived, due to their Pictish heritage - some of them lived wiith farmers, some with hunters, some rejected humanity and returned to monke running with wolves. It was only in the final days of their war with the Wyrm's forces that proper tribal councils were called to action, so they could co-ordinate their actions.
Other than that, they were split into three major camps:
- The Boderia: Also called "The Silent Ones", they were the shaman-equivalents of the Howlers, focusing on dealing with Wraiths, ghosts, and other spooky scary spiritual stuff related to death and the afterlife. They were responsible for maintaining links with the tribe's Ancestor spirits for guidance, and often sacrificed parts of their bodies to come closer to the lands of the dead.
- The Mactire: Another Red Talons knockoff, though with the "100% RAGE toward humanity" part downplayed; they were focused more on the lupine part of their heritage than the human.
- The Toutates: Less an actual camp and more a loosely-affiliated group of Garou, the Toutates were focused on preserving their human Kinfolk.
So how do I play them in the modern day?[edit]
Simple: Do Not.
The White Howlers, from a story-telling standpoint, are an exemplar of the words "How the mighty have fallen." They're the Chaos Space Marines to the Garou's Imperium of Man; a warped, evil reflection of the "Good Guys". They were paragons in the fight against the Wyrm back in their heyday, and they had some of the greatest Gifts in the setting - and that is what makes their fall so supremely impactful. They have turned into the worst of the worst - canonically, there's a BSD in Erebus (not!Purgatory) that has been there for centuries if not millennia and still hasn't been cleansed of enough Wyrm taint to emerge.
Even if you do somehow manage to crowbar in a way of bringing back the White Howlers, they aren't going to be the same tribe as before. Their Totem, Lion, has essentially disowned them, and their history, culture, and so on is all lost at worst and hazily-remembered myth at best. Essentially, you'd be creating a new tribe with the aesthetics, name, and maybe the descendants of the White Howlers, even if they were somehow adopted by Lion once more. It's usually better to let the Howlers rest in peace.
That said, if you really super-duper want to play or have a Howler in your game, read on.
While the dev team's response to that one guy asking about playing "the last of the White Howlers" was originally beast-like shrieks of rage and in-book rants on how it was impossible, the 20th Anniversary edition loosened up on the poor widdle snowflakes and gave them a method of doing so in one of the sidebars. Considering that this provides the 'canonical' method of doing so, getting that book is probably your best bet. Do be aware that, depending on your group, this may or may not backfire.
If you don't want to get into that, a few unofficial warnings and pointers:
- The Black Spiral Dancers are going to have a deathmark on your head as soon as they find out about you (assuming they don't know already), and they are very interested in any remnants of their past. Canonically, not one Dancer Ronin that even tangentially resembles a White Howler has survived for more than a year before being killed or corrupted. Be prepared to put up with a lot of shit from them right off the bat.
- You're a Ronin in all but name. Your original tribe is dead and most other Garou tribes will almost certainly not believe your claims of Howler ancestry, so you're going to be running into all the problems a Ronin has almost immediately (like massive Lunacy, most Garou hating your guts for being a Ronin, and the Wyrm absolutely loving to corrupt your kind). You don't want to be a Ronin? Fuck you. Either suck it up, or make your little snowflake part of a surviving clan with no knowledge of their legacy or lineage.
- If people do believe your claims, you'll have an awful lot of eyes on you thanks to the Howlers' legacy (hello there, BSDs!), making whatever messes you make ten times as severe and turning you into an all-around political football with a gigantic bullseye on your face and ass. Screw up even a little, and there's going to be a lot of Garou chomping at the bit to kill you as an abomination that could fall at any moment; screw up badly or in a way that involves the BSDs, and the Wyrm's legions will be the least of your worries.
- Don't even think of trying to bring them back as a full-fledged tribe. Just don't. You'd need hundreds of years, at least several hundred members (not counting Kinfolk), and a Totem to even come close. And that's without having to overcome the issues of their heritage and the Black Spiral Dancers. Or the difficulties of breeding new Garou at a sustainable rate in the first place. It's not going to fucking happen.
- Genetics do not a tribe make. Taking the Children of Gaia approach and trying to clone yourself a new Howler is not going to create a White Howler, it's just going to create a character with strange stats and maybe one or two superficial connections to them, like their fur being of the same colour - and even that might be enough to call the Black Spiral Dancers to hunt you down.
- Most or all of the Howlers' Kinfolk (and maybe some surviving Garou who didn't participate in the assault for whatever reason) will have gone underground after the tribe fell; they will not have gone around advertising their lineage due to the threat of their corrupted ex-comrades hunting them down. Odds are they integrated with neighbouring tribes and their children took those tribes' rites of passage, so you're unlikely in the extreme to encounter a hidden village of Howlers and their Kinfolk.
- It's possible (whether or not it's plausible is up to you) that a few members escaped into the deeper parts of the Umbra, or did some weird time-fuckery that allowed some of them to escape to a place outside time - there are rumours of a Croatan travelling with the Midnight Circus despite the extinction of the tribe, which could provide a basic justification for the last White Howler showing up as a side character or NPC.
- Failing all else and if you absolutely *must* have the Howlers in your game: make an AU where the Howlers never fell. Congratulations, and enjoy your AIDS, you uncreative wanker!
- If you want to keep the BSDs, you can crib from the "A Tribe Falls" scenarios while adjusting the timeline to fit. The Red Talons are probably the best choice for taking the Howlers' place, considering the way that at least one of their factions is plausibly Wyrm-tainted; having them go off the deep end with hatred for humanity and fall to the Wyrm isn't too far-fetched for a divergence point. This also prevents your local That Guy trying to play one, which is always a benefit.
